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Review

Fiddling for Waterbuffaloes

S. P. Somtow

1986 (chapbook 1992)

Pulphouse Press






Review by Peter Young in The Thai Literary Supplement #16 (December 2019).


Somtow had already been writing science fiction and fantasy for a decade before this, his first story set in his native Thailand. As one might expect, this tale of alien possession affecting the family of brothers who grew up dubbing episodes of Star Trek into Thai is both colourful and lively and also on the borderline of being proper recursive SF, with nods to genre TV and film in several directions. It all holds up well a quarter of a century after it was written, although it’s worth noting that the family members may be indeed all be stereotypes now but to readers of Analog in 1986 (where the story first appeared) they were probably much more of a novelty.